Manuel de Freitas

Manny (Manuel) de Freitas MP
Shadow Deputy Minister of Transport
Incumbent
Assumed office 2009
Leader	Helen Zille
Member of Parliament for Johannesburg South, Gauteng
Incumbent
Assumed office 6 May 2009
Personal details
Born	10 April 1968 (1968-28-10) (age 42) Namibia
Nationality	South African
Political party	Democratic Alliance

Manuel de Freitas is a South African politician, currently a Member of Parliament with the Democratic Alliance, and the Shadow Deputy Minister of Transport.

References

Political offices
Preceded by ??	South African Shadow Deputy Minister of Transport 2009–present	Incumbent

Manny de Freitas was born in the small fishing village of Lüderitz in the then South West Africa, now independent Namibia. He has been a resident of Johannesburg since the age of 7. Manny says that he loves Johannesburg and its people. Manny’s hobbies include reading; travelling, enjoys sports and is interested in nutrition and body building.

Manny has been a member of the Party since 1993 when it was still the Democratic Party. He was very involved in the DP Youth and served as its Federal Chairman for 4 years.

Manny’s involvement in the community spans over many years in church, community, health and humanitarian organisations. Amongst numerous organisations, de Freitas was on the Executive Committee of the Lusito School for the Mentally and Physically Disabled and also served on its Council for many years. He has also been involved with the United Cerebral Palsy Association. He sat on various Boards such as the Portuguese Community Radio and the Board of Editors of the international LIBEL magazine and Youth Encounter Spirit-Southern Africa. He sits on the Board of the Luso-South African Business Council of which he is also a founder-member. He is a member of the Madeiran Community Council and is the Gauteng Provincial Chairman of the CANSA Association. In October 2008 he was invited to serve on the World Council for Portuguese Communities.

He has hosted various radio shows both in English and in Portuguese (which he speaks fluently) on various radio stations and hosted 2 shows on Radio Veritas, the only Catholic radio station in South Africa, for five years.

Manny de Freitas is also recipient of various awards which include, the Luis Vaz de Camões Medal of Merit for Outstanding work done in the Portuguese Community and the Leading Professionals of the World Medal. He is an Honorary Citizen of the State of Nebraska, USA and was also semi-finalist for the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights in 1996.

In 1995 Manny de Freitas was elected in the first democratic local government elections as one of the country’s youngest councillors. He was elected to the then Eastern Metropolitan Local Council of the then Johannesburg Metropolitan Transitional Council where he served on numerous committees and became Chief Whip of the caucus in 1996.

In 1999 Manny was elected as Member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (MPL), again being one of the youngest MPLs, where he served on the following committees: Development, Planning and Local Government Portfolio Committee; Members Affairs, Internal Arrangements, Programming and Rules Committees (as whip); Public Transport, Roads and Works Portfolio Committee, Petitions and Public Participation Committee and oversight on the Premiers Office (when he exposed corruption and mal-administration in the Premiers office) and Housing Committee. He was also chairman of the Taxi Coordinating Task Team at the time. During his term he helped found and was founding chairman for the Organisation for DP Member of Legislatures. During his tenure at the Provincial Legislature he exposed corruption and mal-administration in the housing and transport departments as well as in the taxi council.

Manny was appointed as the DA’s Director for the Gauteng East Region in 2004 when we returned to the City of Johannesburg Council. Here he served on committees such as Municipal Enterprises and Housing. In 2005 history was made when Manny led the project to build the first house ever to be built and financed by a political party. The house was built by the DA Johannesburg caucus for an underprivileged family in Ivory Park.

On re-election to Council in the 2006 Election, Manny continued to chair the Housing committee and led the Media Unit in that caucus and continued being Chairman for the Soweto Constituency.

Manny de Freitas was elected as Member of Parliament in April 2009 and serves as the Shadow Deputy Minister for Transport.

Personal quote: Give the world the best you have and the best will come back to you.

Persondata
Name	De Freitas, Manuel
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1968-28-10
Place of birth	Namibia
Date of death
Place of death